


27 Dress Code Violations

by bonn



Series: JILYCHALLENGE [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Muggle, F/M, jilychallenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 20:04:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10748847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonn/pseuds/bonn
Summary: for april's jilychallenge over on tumblr dot comprompt: "i get dress coded so you give me your jacket and we protest unfair regulations for girls together/you sass the teacher about how distracted you are by my shoulders"





	27 Dress Code Violations

    i.

She walks into English fifteen minutes late, wearing both a deeply unflattering smock and a scowl. Neither are an especially new look on her.

"Vector," she says under her breath, as an answer to Mary McDonald's unspoken question. It's the answer to every question in the room. Ms Vector is notorious among them all for her very strict adherence to the school's dress code.

"Yes, Miss Evans' entrance was very exciting, but I'll have your attention back to the lesson now, please," says Ms McGonagall. James snaps back to attention. It's for the best.

    ii.

"Here," James says, shrugging off his jacket and thrusting it toward Lily. She gives him this look like, _fuck off_ , and James has to bite his tongue to stop from aggravating her. "They're doing uniform checks up the hall. Just put it on."

Evans gives him a very strange look, and it takes him a second to realise that it's neutral.

She looks good in his jacket.

    iii.

Every third dress code violation results in a lunch time detention. It's only October, and Lily's already had six. She doesn't look at James as she takes the seat three ahead and one to the left of him.

    iv.

There's a thump from somewhere in the back of the classroom, and McGonagall isn't planning on looking up - it sounds like it came from the general vicinity of Potter and Black, and _that's_  certainly not a situation she wants to engage with - but the entire class is already turned around to see what the fuss is.

She strides down the aisle between the desks, and is about three years past surprised to find James Potter lying on the floor, gazing at the ceiling, glasses knocked aside.

"Am I boring you so much that you decided to take a nap?" she asks, and James gives this _wicked_ smile, and here we go--

"Sorry, Miss, I can't get up. It's Evans' shoulders - they're overwhelming me. I simply can't do anything until she covers them up. Sirius, tell me when it's safe."

He's a funny boy, she'll give him that. "Potter, get up. This is hardly the time for foolishness."

    v.

The smock is back. The scowl is back. Lily Evans stomps down the hall. Her anger is back.

    vi.

"All I'm saying," James says, really pretty loudly for such a particularly dull study period, "is that if Evans is going to get dress coded day in and day out because you can see the base of her throat, or _whatever_ , does that mean we can rally to get Snape dress coded for the unsightly mop he wears on his head? Just because it seems to be decided rather arbitrarily, doesn't it?"

"Leave him alone, Potter," she says, and he somehow misses how tired she is, how _weary_. She's fighting a war on her own and the cracks are beginning to show.

"I'm standing up for you!"

"Yeah, well, don't. I don't have time to deal with you. Just leave us alone."

    vii.

"Potter, what on earth are you dressed as?"

There's that shit-eating grin of his as he rises from his chair in order to fully display the skin-tight cropped vest top and booty shorts he's wearing for Halloween. Oh god is he wearing them, Lily thinks.

"Gender inequality," he says.

McGonagall rubs her temples for a second, then opens her eyes again. "Sit down," she says.

    viii.

It's sunny - the first sunny day in ages, so of course Lily is going to wear a vest top. Which means that of course she's going to get dress coded, which means that of course she's going to be fuming all day, which means that of course the sunniness is going to be a complete waste.

"Maybe if you didn't dress like a slut all the time, you wouldn't get dress coded so much," Sev says.

It's not her shoulders that land her in detention that day.

    ix.

James pokes his head into the study. Well, maybe that's an oversimplification--

James drapes himself in the doorway into the study, with an expression on his face that screams _I want to do something dumb, and I already know you're going to help me whether you want to or not_. Euphemia knows it well; she saw it enough times on Fleamont's face before they even got _married_ to satisfy a lifetime.

"Mum," he says, and she braces for impact, "do you know where I could find an authentic pre-war costume that I could have available for me to wear to school tomorrow?"

"Why on earth would you need a pre-war costume to wear to school tomorrow?"

"I have to defend a girl's honour." He says it so simply, like it's the easiest thing in the world. Like he doesn't mean _I have to defend_ the _girl's honour_.

"Obviously."

"Obviously," he grins.

She removes her glasses and massages the bridge of her nose. "Pre which war?"

    x.

Lily gives him an incredulous look when he walks past her in the quadrangle, not _pleased_ exactly but definitely not _displeased_. Kind of like she's trying to work out what his soul is made of. He winks at her, and this is, of course, a mistake, because her face turns stony so fast he doubts for a second that it was ever anything else.

"Potter," barks McGonagall, and he spins around to give her an innocent look that would only be convincing on the face of any other person in the world, "what is it that you're wearing?"

"What do you mean, what is it I'm wearing?"

"The costume."

"What costume?" he asks, and the corner of his mouth twitches.

" _Potter_ ," she warns, and he knows he's reached the end of the muck-about tether.

"I just noticed, over the past few weeks, that the dress code has been getting tighter, and some of the new rules - well, I'm sure you can forgive me for assuming we'd travelled back in time to the 19th century and dressing accordingly."

"Oh my god," someone whispers. It might be Evans. It's probably not.

(It is)

    xi.

"That was funny, with the costume."

It takes James a moment to realise that she's talking to him, and by that point he just looks like an idiot, because they're they only two people in the room apart from Slughorn, who's dozing rather noisily up the other end.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he says, but his leg starts bouncing anyway. She moves to the desk in front of him.

"Is that why you're in today?"

"Nah, Dumbledore decided I wasn't actually breaking any rules so they let it slide. Phoned my mum, though. As if she didn't enable the whole thing."

"What did you do, then?"

He looks up at her from where his pen is spinning around on the desk, and gives her an easy smile. It's not easy. "Remember last term when me and Remus got stuck on the roof?"

"Vaguely." She's leaning toward him now, her chin resting on her arms folded over the back of her chair.

"Yeah, well we were up there to try to set up this joke where we were going to drop buckets of fake blood on Avery and Mulciber."

"That, I do remember."

James grimaces. "Yeah."

"How come you're here if that was last term?"

He grimaces _more_. "Minnie gave me so many detentions for it that I'm still serving them."

"Yikes."

He shrugs. "Worth it. What are you in for?"

"I wore shorts on Monday."

"And?"

"No, that's it. I got detention for wearing shorts."

"You... _what_? Shorts?"

"I thought your whole point with that dumb outfit was that you were trying to point out how _fucked_ the dress code is." She sits back, leans her elbows on the desk.

"I mean..." he trails off, and his face is briefly pained before it clears. "So did I."

    xii.

"It's actually kind of lovely," he's saying to Peter when she passes him on her way in through the gates. "It's really fun to do this - watch."

Lily doesn't mean to stop as he twirls around to make the skirt of his dress balloon out around him, but she does.

"That's nice, but why are you wearing it?" Peter asks, and James grins.

"Solidarity, my friend."

Lily doesn't know how to feel about that.

    xiii.

She sits next to him in detention of her own accord, and when Slughorn drifts off - a record 3 minutes after she arrives - he shoves his pencilcase back into his rucksack and pushes open the nearest window.

"What are you doing?" she asks, and he brings a long finger to his lips. "You're not sneaking out?"

"If they didn't want us to sneak out, they wouldn't have given us a classroom on the ground floor _and_ the only teacher who can be depended upon to fall asleep while supervising _every single time_."

She can't argue with that.

    xiv.

"Wow Potter, you've got legs for days," Mary says, and Marlene wolf-whistles behind her. Lily's staring at him, she's _staring at him_ , and he feels naked, all of a sudden.

"Jesus Christ, James," Remus says, somewhere between _this is horrifying_ and _this is hilarious_.

"I'm just testing how far I can push it before I get coded, you know? Like how short a skirt do I need to wear?"

"Yeah, I don't think they make them much shorter than that."

Lily snorts into her locker, and it's a triumph, even if she's laughing at what Remus said.

    xv.

Dumbledore stands before them, his hands clasped behind his back. He seems to be waiting for something, but what, Lily can't imagine. She glances around, and it's only when she realises that he isn't there that she figures out she's looking for James.

The assembly begins.

"I remind you all that the teacher's carpark is off limits..."

Maybe Lily is imagining it, but it sounds a lot like music is playing somewhere nearby, very faintly. She isn't the only one that's noticed, and it's getting louder, and suddenly the whole hall is filled with quickfire Spanish, blaring from the speakers.

McGonagall is on her feet in an instant. "Black!" she shouts, and Lily's inclined to agree because who else would be blasting _Gasolina_ , but he's nowhere in sight, so what can she do?

It fades back down, and in the commotion James has appeared and somehow managed to procure a microphone, and holy _shit_ is he--

"Hey guys, it's me, your boy JP," a few laughs, mostly from the boys behind Lily, and she might give him a small smile when he catches her eye, and she might join in laughing when he winks at her. "Just wanted to bring your attention to something really serious for a sec. Dunno if you've noticed, but the new dress code is pretty sexist - a girl who would like to stay anonymous got detention last week for wearing _shorts_. Meanwhile, I see guys walking around in vest tops and no one's telling us _our_ shoulders are distracting!" He looks to his left, and sees McGonagall striding toward him, and, "In conclusion protest and reject authority, and don't--"

McGonagall rips the mic out of his hands, and he finds Lily in the crowd as he's being frogmarched out of the hall.

She's smiling, and it's blinding him, just a little.

    xvi.

"Best chips in town," the sign at the front of the chippy down the road from school proclaims in faded lettering as they approach it.

"I'm inclined to disagree," James says, rummaging in his pocket for a fiver.

"You don't like the chips here?"

"They're alright. King's has the best."

"King's? Yeah, if you _like_ spending a stupid amount of money."

"Where's your best, then?"

"Two Fins, obviously."

"Obviously," he repeats, pulling open the door. "We've got about 40 minutes until we should head back, but... is this _Hang On Sloopy_?"

"Sounds like it," she says, but he's already dancing, and it's the _worst_ kind of dancing, the kind that sucks everyone around it in like a make-a-fool-of-yourself black hole.

    xvii.

"Hey," he says, and she just about smashes her locker door into his face when her arm spasms in surprise.

"Hey," she says, and it takes a moment for the I-just-saw-my-life-flash-before-my-eyes expression to clear from his face.

"I got you something." Her eyebrows start to climb threateningly at this, so he amends, "I got _us_ something. Here." He hands her a bundle of white fabric, and she lets the massively oversized shirt unfurl as she takes it.

"Oh my god," she says.

"I got me one too, so that we can both wear them next time you get dress coded." He rolls out his own, and she grins at him.

    xviii.

When they go to the chippy this time, another dumb song from the 60s or the 70s or 80s or any time that isn't _now_ is playing, but James just nods along while they wait for their chips.

"I think we should organise a protest," he says, finally.

"Hmm?" she asks, through a mouthful.

"A protest. It's just so fucking... totalitarian. We can't just let it happen. You girls cop enough flack without your fucking _school_ stepping in to slut-shame."

She might have kissed him, just then, if he hadn't immediately shovelled six chips into his mouth.

    xix.

 _Remus Lupin to Friends of James Potter Support Group_ : have you seen what prongs and lily are wearing

 _Peter Pettigrew_ : No????

 _Remus Lupin_ : matching bikini body shirts

 _Peter Pettigrew_ : Like the one robin wears in the atlantic city himym ep???

 _Remus Lupin_ : YES

 _Remus Lupin_ : exactly that

 _Sirius Black_ : theyre so cute its disgusting + i hate it

 _Remus Lupin_ : how long til they get together do we reckon

 _Peter Pettigrew_ : They arent already???

    xx.

They ditch class to put up the posters James' dad printed out at the office the day before, and Lily’s never _done that_ before but it’s okay, because she’s with him.

    **PROTEST UNFAIR DRESS CODE**  
**REGULATIONS ON CAMPUS**  
      _Lunch time today,_  
_In the Quadrangle_

They have to duck around corners several times to avoid Filch, and once, James pulls them into what he _thought_ was an empty classroom, but is actually a much smaller and much-less-equipped-to-hold-two-bodies supply closet.

Lily's palm is pressed against his chest, and he shivers under it.

"My hands are really cold, sorry," she whispers, and withdraws it.

It wasn't the cold that made him shiver.

    xxi.

"What do we want?"

"Repeal of stricter dress code regulations!"

"When do we want it?"

"Now!"

James is alight, and something in Lily just _clicks_ , and holy fuck--

"I say _you won't_ , you say _shame me_! You won't!"

"Shame me!"

"You won't!"

"Shame me!"

Mostly it's Sirius and Mary shouting back, but there has to be at least 50 people gathered around the honest to god _soap boxes_ that James somehow managed to procure for them to stand on, and is there _anything_ he can't do?

He grins at her, head cocked and whole body angled towards her, radiating this intoxicating _joy_. He was born for this, that's not hard to see.

She kisses him.

**Author's Note:**

> xoxo gossip bonn


End file.
